


The Man in the Coat

by Puzzled



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2020-09-27 13:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20408545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puzzled/pseuds/Puzzled
Summary: Chicago has always been dangerous at night. On the hunt for a mob hitman with a taste for the theatrical and trapped between charlatans and corruption Special Agent Tilly will need all the help he can get to make it out alive.





	1. Chapter One

“The man in the coat?” Agent Tilly looked slightly guilty, but nodded to the detective’s question.  
  
“That’s what we’re calling him.” He slid a grainy picture from his briefcase across the conference room table to her to join the others. It showed a tall man in a long trenchcoat doing something to a door.  
  
“This picture is awful, your boys down in Quantico couldn’t do anything?”  
  
“That’s a funny thing, all the pictures of him are terrible.” Tilly produced another much crisper photo, showing the door without the man. “Our techs don’t have any good answers. Their first thought was radiation, but when they did the math it turns out that our man would need to be carrying around a nuke’s worth of plutonium and the CDC would have already found him as the epicenter of a cancer epidemic.”  
  
“If he’s hanging out with the right crowd,” Murphy tapped the other pictures, chalk outlines, blood stains, and bullet casings, “well cancer is a slow killer.”  
  
“Maybe, but that will just raise more questions. When we catch him we’ll learn the truth.”  
  
Murphy spent another moment looking at the pictures before meeting Tilly’s eyes. “I’m always happy to help the FBI, but why are you talking to me? Homicide seems like a much better fit for some hitter.”  
  
“We’ve been looking back at some other incidents. Guys like this, they don’t come onto the scene fully formed.”  
  
“It’d be hard to miss a guy that big in a coat like that, he’s got to be what, six six?”  
  
“Based on the door and the angle, around there. And you’re right Lieutenant, if people saw him they’d talk. But since they’re not...” Tilly gave a wave towards the evidence of bloody mayhem. “He could be more active than we know.”  
  
“So what case of mine do you think is covered in his bloody fingerprints?”  
  
“Victor Sells.”  
  
“Marcone took credit for that.”  
  
“Yes, yes he did.”  
  
“A lot of three eye dealers didn’t make it through the week after Sells died, and those were definitely done by Marcone.”  
  
“John Marcone is a careful man, and he knows the value of discretion.” Tily tapped the picture of the man in the coat. “This guy has a habit of walking into the front door of stash houses and leaving nothing but fire. Tell me one case of arson by Marcone that’s not insurance fraud.”  
  
“You’ve got all the answers here Agent Tilly, I’m still not hearing what you need me for.”  
  
“Before I came to talk to you I got a little background. You’re a good officer, and you’re down here in a dead end branch. I’ve seen that before, and it usually means politics.” Another folder came from the briefcase. “You were the first officer to mention the Streetwolves. They’re gone now, and two FBI agents went with them. We know it was this guy.” A evidence bag came out, sealed around a flattened bullet. “The Full Moon Garage was littered with them, before the Streetwolves attempted to beat our man to death with their bare hands.”  
  
“That coat is bulletproof?”  
  
“Maybe, but it’s certainly enough to conceal a heavy-duty vest under it. We find the flattened shells everywhere he goes, and there’s never any of his blood.”  
  
“This is interesting and all, but I’m still not hearing what I can do.”  
  
“Your cases have changed over the last year. Fewer deaths, and the explanations for the weirdness have become increasingly implausible. You haven’t changed, and neither have the crimes. What has changed is that Homicide is taking them, they’ve got a suspect and a nice easy answer.”  
  
“And yet you’re down here at Special Investigations talking to me.”  
  
“I don’t trust that shiny new headquarters. Marcone is the most obvious, but there’s too many people there with the power to obstruct and delay. You’ve been closest to this guy and you haven’t even been able to look for him. With the Bureau behind you, next time he appears you’re going after him.”  
  


* * *

  
“Agent Tilly.” The G-Man answered his phone the way he did everything, quickly and sharply.  
  
“This is Lieutenant Murphy. We’ve got something.”  
  
“We’ll be there in twenty.”  
  
“Alright, and Tilly, come armed for bear.”  
  
He arrived with two other agents, they were introduced and promptly receded into the background as Murphy started briefing her team.  
  
“We’ve been hearing the name Leonid Kravos from the usual suspects for a while, and now we’ve got a location. He’s been _drugging_ people, getting them hooked on whatever cultish things he’s saying and I want him in jail before he takes any more steps past dealing drugs with delusions of grandeur.”  
  
The cops looked uneasy, and Tilly wondered what they’d be saying if he wasn’t there. Murphy’s story sounded more rehearsed than it should be.  
  
“This Kravos, why you and not the Vice squad?”  
  
Murphy’s face twisted. “They don’t care about small time dealers, even ones with gimmicks. Special Investigations deals with the things that fall into the cracks Agent Tilly, and some things that crawl out of them.”  
  
He nodded, this case wasn’t quite what he’d wanted but he couldn’t complain. The Man in the Coat seemed to have an appetite for the macabre, and perhaps Kravos would provide a lead. Even if he didn’t it would save him and his agents from another day pretending not to see the corruption all around them.  
  
“When do we leave then?”  
  
“The warrant just came through, and we’re burning daylight. As soon as we’re geared up we’re rolling.”  
  
He was ready, his vest was on under his standard FBI windbreaker. The Glock holstered at his side was loaded, while extra magazines weighed him down with lead and steel. His baton was opposite his gun in case trouble got too close, but since it wasn’t Valentine’s day, he didn’t feel too worried. Even if it had been they had long guns in the Suburban parked outside, and new tactical radios sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. All in all, it was more than enough for some new age drug dealer.  
  
Tilly turned his attention to the members of special investigations, and past Lieutenant Murphy he couldn’t help but find them wanting. Henry Rawlins barely fit into his vest, and Ronald Carmichael didn’t. They had revolvers, heavy pieces of iron that looked like they’d been old when the detectives were young, and actual nightsticks. He knew the Bureau had better budgets than most, but this was ridiculous.  
  
Murphy had caught him staring, and she raised one blonde eyebrow as if in judgement. The Bureau trained embarrassment out of its agents though, and he met her gaze until she went back to her own equipment.  
  
“Want to follow us to the address, Agent?”  
  
“It’s your city.” Waking out into the parking lot their blacked out suburban looked alien next to the old squad cars. He didn’t doubt there’d be rust on their frames if he bent down to look, but instead he just swung into the passenger seat as Agent Roberts turned the key in the ignition.  
  
“You sure about this, sir?” Roberts was eight months out of Quantico, and if he had the guts to be asking questions it meant he was extremely skeptical.  
  
“It’s a lead, agent. Now drive.”  
  
The potholed streets were bad enough that they shook the big car as they barreled down back streets. The sun was low behind clouds that cast the entire city in shades of flat grey, and the few pedestrians they passed were hiding in their coats from the early November chill.  
  
“Do you really think that this Kravos is going to be connected to the suspect?” Roberts had both his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes were forward as if it was easier to question him if he didn’t have to look at him.  
  
“Lieutenant Murphy has been adjacent to the man in the coat on several occasions, she’s a better bet than going to look at a bunch of flattened bullets wherever he appears next.”  
  
“Besides when she talks, we don’t hear Marcone.” Connolly from the back seat hadn’t needed any convincing. He’d come from the Rangers, and it was clear he still felt guilty that he’d left the Army just before 9/11. Tilly could have said they were arresting the entire Bears offensive line and he’d have been onboard, he was desperate for action, any action.  
  
Ahead of them the cops were pulling to a stop, and Roberts guided them in behind them.  
  
“Connolly, take the M4.” Tilly told himself he wasn’t just throwing the man a bone because he’d supported him.  
  
They piled out, and clustered around Lieutenant Murphy. Despite her diminutive stature the men around her were silent. The street was lined with warehouses, and a cold breeze swept down the urban canyon.  
  
“We’ve all been here before, and we’ve all seen what drugged up junkies can do.” She pointed at the dented door next to the chained shut overhead doors. “Whatever is in there, be careful, and we’ll all be going home tonight to watch the game.” Tilly caught Connolly’s eyes and motioned him forward just behind Stallings at the door.  
  
“Chicago PD, open up!” The big man hammered the door, and it swung open too easily into the darkness, leaving him off balance.  
  
Connolly darted into the opening, his soldier’s instincts keeping him from being backlit.  
  
“Entry way clear!” Murphy and Stallings went after him, guns in their hands and Tilly followed them after giving the empty street one last look.  
  
The light switches didn’t work inside, and any windows were either too dirty to let light through or were boarded up. The only illumination was from their flashlights, and the narrow beams only made the darkness around them deeper. They were seven, and despite their numbers they stayed close together as they advanced.  
  
“Goddam rats.” Roberts’s light darted around, trying to catch the rodents they could all hear scuttling through the walls.  
  
“Wait! What’s that?” Stallings was pointing at something, Tilly followed his arm to what his flashlight was lighting up.  
  
“Rats.” There were five of them, nailed to the floor, and between them were lines carved into the rough concrete. Murphy walked closer as she spoke, crouching down next to the pentagram. “Just dead rats. Kravos is leaning into his image.” She stood and turned towards the door leading further in, leaving the grisly image in the corner behind her. “Let’s go get him and get out of here before we get hantavirus.”  
  
“Lieutenant, shouldn’t we-“ Murphy gave Rawlins a look that shut him up.  
  
“Let’s go, detective.”  
  
The next door opened into the warehouse proper. Long rows of silent and dusty crates were stacked in what had once been neat grids. Now it was a labyrinth, and the only hint on where to go was tracks left through the heavy dust.  
  
The shadows danced off the uneven edges of the boxes, the flashlights seemed to flicker as their light scattered and bounced. They were compressed by the narrow corridors, and Tilly didn’t need Connolly’s army training to know that they were in a bad spot. The crates extended above them, wooden walls at least ten feet high with the ceiling lost in darkness far above them. Burnt out candles, wax flooding the floor around them, lined the path and letters in some imaginary script were scraped into the floor. They advanced.  
  
The skitters of the rats was the only noise past their deep breaths echoing strangely in the tight confines. It seemed like the maze was far too large for the warehouse, but their path bent strangely, folding back on itself.  
  
“Fuck!” Connolly pulled up short, he’d taken point, and Tilly pushed past the cops to look over Murphy at what his agent had seen.  
  
It was a silhouette, scorched or painted on one of the crates. It was crude, but in the darkness, and with the atmosphere he couldn’t blame his man for being startled at it looking down on him from just around the corner.  
  
“Alright, Connolly?”  
  
“Yes sir.”  
  
“Then let’s go.”  
  
They moved faster now, as if to defy their own irrational fears and it was almost a shock to emerge from the wooden walls into an opening.  
  
Their lights found a man on hands and knees in the center of it, facing away from them as he stared at another grander silhouette looming over them all, this one with wings and horns.  
  
“Leonid Kravos, you’re under arrest for the possession and sale of controlled substances.” Lieutenant Murphy was the only one still focused it seemed, and she advanced with handcuffs hanging loosely, her heavy flashlight trained on the man. He rose, and Tilly wasn’t the only one whose gun was trained on the man.  
  
“No sudden movements, get back on the ground!” Stallings roared as he charged forward. “Show me your hands!”  
  
Kravos obeyed, spreading his arms wide as he dropped to his knees. He wore a thick robe, like a priest’s vestments, and in the instant before Stallings wrestled him into cuffs it was impossible to see him as anything other than a man in prayer.  
  
“You have the right to remain silent-“ The Miranda warnings faded into the background as Tilly looked at the intricate markings etched onto the floor. Kravos had been at the edge of a circle lined with enough Greek letters for every fraternity ever kicked off campus. It had probably impressed his clients.  
  
“Ready to get out of here?” Murphy’s voice shocked him, but he turned to her without showing it.  
  
“Yeah, I’m ready. Ready for Florida, or California, some place with sun and warmth.”  
  
The maze didn’t seem as long on the way out with Kravos stumbling in front of them. The grandeur he’d possessed for an instant vanished in the wan light of late afternoon. His mantle seemed moth bitten, and his hair was lank and greasy. Tilly watched as Rawlins patted him down across the hood of a cop car, pulling a switch blade and several bags of pills from him before depositing them in evidence bags.  
  
Murphy stood next to him as Rawlins forced Kravos into the back seat. “Sorry it was a bust Agent, no giant hitmen to be found at all.”  
  
“It was a long shot Lieutenant.”  
  
“You’re out of here then? Back downtown?”  
  
“I’ll come back to the station, watch him get processed in. Might as well make a proper job of it.”  
  
“At least you got a story out of it.”  
  
“True, Connolly is going to owe me a few drinks for not telling people about him nearly shooting a shadow.”  
  
“Give MacAnally’s a try for drinks, there’s no sun there but it is warm.”  
  
For a split-second Tilly let himself look at Murphy as more than a colleague, and knew it was a mistake. She’d be hard to look at professionally now.  
  
“Some other time maybe.” He didn’t think it had been an offer, and he resolved not to think about it.  
  
“Got it. See you back at the office.”  
  
Roberts was silent as they drove back, they all were. Normally he’d have given Connolly a hard time, but the second image, with its horns and far too many eyes was sticking with him.  
  
The somber mood continued as he was the only one to go into the station, following Murphy and Rawlins as Stallings perp-walked Kravos to the cells.  
  
The big man removed Kravos’s hand cuffs and shoved him inside before slamming the barred door shut. Kravos turned almost immediately, and his dark eyes swept over all of them.  
  
“You’ll see a judge tomorrow morning Kravos.” Murphy seemed almost bored at the pronouncement.  
  
“I’d rather see black robes and Black Cats than a black coat.” His voice was resonant, but Tilly seized on his words.  
  
“A black coat?”  
  
“A black coat.” Kravos looked at Tilly, and Tilly found himself avoiding eye contact. “I was told he was coming, and I know what he’s done, what he can do. I couldn’t stop him.” He smiled; his teeth were bright white. “Maybe you can.”  
  
“What do you know about him?” He was standing closer to the bars than he should be and forced himself to take a step back.  
  
“He’s a killer, death walks behind him, before him, on all sides.” Kravos sat on the bench in the back of his cell without looking. “I know he wants me dead.”  
  
Tilly turned, his eyes darting over the assembled force of Special Investigations. The Man in the Coat had walked into and out of much worse without blinking.  
  
“This site isn’t secure, get him back in the cuffs.” He cut off Murphy’s protests with a single sharp gesture. “My target has attacked much more heavily guarded locations. We need to get downtown.”  
  
She looked between him and Kravos for several seconds before nodding.  
  
“We need to get permission before we transfer a prisoner, I’ll call it in.”  
  
“Do that, I’ll let my men know.”  
  
The sun had set in the short time indoors, it seemed like half the streetlights were out as he knocked on Roberts’s window.  
  
“Kravos knows something about the man in the coat. We’re taking him downtown.” He didn’t give them time to argue before hurrying back to the station, it was too cold to wait outdoors.  
  
Murphy met him as he entered in a rush of frozen air, and she didn’t look happy. “They approved the move, but we’re not going to the main jail, something is up and they’re slammed with gangs.”  
  
Tilly had to resist the urge to curse. “The whole point is to get Kravos somewhere better defended.”  
  
“I told them that, and they’ve got a location they’re sure is safe.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
“A precinct with high security cells. Homan Square.”


	2. Chapter Two

Homan Square was a brick building ahead of them, long and despite being a few stories tall it still looked low. Roberts was reacting to his energy, nearly tailgating the squad car with Kravos in the back as they pulled into the parking lot. Tilly found himself drumming his fingers on his gun as he leaned forward, his vest digging into his chest as he kept his eyes locked on his best lead yet.  
  
The Man in the Coat had started out as a rumor. Some guy in a trench coat who left nothing but violence in his wake, violence that Marcone always seemed ready to exploit. That wouldn’t have been enough to call in the FBI by itself, he could have stayed a problem for the Chicago PD, or maybe the Illinois State Troopers if he made it to the suburbs. It was a whole new world after 9/11 though, evidence got put into computers and the national databases eventually found a hit, a lot of hits.  
  
His fingerprints showed up on crimes across the country, from shoplifting to shootouts. Never any DNA, no blood, no hair, and never any good pictures. Witnesses didn’t have anything good to say, sometimes he was seen with a tall blonde woman, other times he wasn’t seen at all even when it was impossible for them not to have seen him. They were finding filing cabinets of cases that ended with mysterious deaths and signs of his presence, including the only flamethrower murders ever committed on US soil. The victims had been so warped by the fire that they barely even looked human, the intense heat made identifying the victims impossible.  
  
The orange lights on the outside of the precinct pushed the night back in the sodium glow, but past them the shadows were deep and cold. Tilly, Connolly, and Roberts followed Murphy, Stallings having already pushed Kravos ahead, up the steps and in.  
  
The lobby of the building looked like a million other police stations. Old and scuffed wooden floors, chairs that had never had better days, with people on them who’d never been up and in. All of them looked irritated at the frozen air that came in with them, but Tilly thought anyone dumb enough to live in Chicago should be used to it. Murphy and Stallings were by a counter arguing with an annoyed looking cop behind bulletproof glass with Kravos waiting patiently.  
  
“FBI, what’s the problem?” Flashing his badge wasn’t his preferred technique, but it had a way of getting through bureaucrats.  
  
“Like I was telling these guys,” the man seemed happy to have an excuse not to deal with Special Investigations, “prisoners aren’t supposed to come in the front here.”  
  
“We’re here now, and it’s too damned cold to go around back.” Stallings said exactly what Tilly was thinking.  
  
“I understand that Lieutenant Murphy was directed to bring her prisoner here. He’s a person of interest in a case I’m working and I want him checked in so I can interrogate him.” The cop, his badge read Hunt, took another look at Tilly.  
  
“He’s part of a federal case?”  
  
“That is why I am here.” He pronounced each word carefully.  
  
“We can process him in up here then.” He picked up his phone and punched in a few numbers, before cursing and punching them in again. “Phone systems are all effed up, they’ve been getting worse all week.”  
  
None of them felt compelled to answer him as they listened to a one-sided conversation. “Yeah, this is Hunt, got a prisoner. Yeah, I know they’re supposed to go in the back. Yeah, I told them, but the _Fed_ up here doesn’t want to go around back.” Hunt tried to meet his eyes, as if to commiserate with someone being just as obstructive as he’d been. “Ok, I’ll send them through and log them in.” He hung up and motioned forward. “I need your badges, gotta get you checked in.”  
  
Tilly jerked his head, Roberts and Connolly passed their badges up and he fanned them out in front of Hunt who started pecking the numbers into his computer.  
  
“Stallings, three-three-fifty-six.” Stallings ground out when Hunt looked at him.  
  
“Murphy, thirteen-thirteen.” Her mouth twisted when she said it, and Hunt visibly smirked.  
  
“All set then, head through there.” When they got to the door he pointed to there was a loud click as a magnetic lock disengaged. Murphy opened it, as Tilly and the other agents followed Stallings and Kravos in.  
  
Two men were waiting for them. “We’ll take him off your hands officers.” Tilly gave both of them a once over, the taller one was carrying enough spare tires for a Baja race, and the shorter had the cauliflower ears of a boxer who stuck with the sport a year too long.  
  
“Thanks Denier and,” he tilted his head to see the name of the shorter one, “Nowak, but I’d like to keep my eyes on him.”  
  
“Sorry Agent,” Denier didn’t sound sorry. “Arresting officers can’t be present when prisoners are checked in at Homan Square, strict policy.”  
  
“You can wait in the break room if you want.” Nowak pointed halfheartedly up the hall. “The coffee is shit, but it’s hot.”  
  
“Stallings.” The big man shoved Kravos towards Denier at Murphy’s word. “We want him back in an interrogation room ASAP.”  
  
“Sure thing Lieutenant.”  
  
For a lack of alternatives they found themselves in the breakroom. The promised coffee was a half inch of sludge at the bottom of a pot, thick enough to use as mortar. Connolly picked it up, watched it slowly ooze and then set it back down shaking his head.  
  
“Sometimes I wish we had a broader jurisdiction.”  
  
“There’s not enough cells in America to arrest all the people who don’t make a new pot.” Stallings sounded mournful at the thought.  
  
“There might be enough to arrest all the ones who make crappy coffee.” Connolly was wistful. “In Somalia we had good coffee, and that was a million miles from anywhere. Seems like Chicago could do better.” He looked between Murphy and Stallings. “Just saying.”  
  
“Moving on.” Tilly waited until they were all looking at him. “It’s already getting late, and I don’t want to be stuck in this precinct too much longer. We didn’t really have time earlier, but can you give me the rundown on Kravos? How’d you pick him, how’d you know where he was?”  
  
“Sure, but it’s a bit of a story.” Murphy pulled out one of the chairs around the rude little table and sat down, Tilly followed suit on the fair side. “You know about ThreeEye right?”  
  
“A potent hallucinogen, and one of the cases that got us pointed your way.”  
  
“Kravos came on the scene after all of that, but he drew a few of the dealers Marcone didn’t get his way.”  
  
“Why didn’t Marcone go after him?”  
  
“Too small time probably. Compared to Sells going after his made men a random druggie with the last stocks of ThreeEye must not have registered.”  
  
Roberts broke in at that. “Or Marcone was just too busy, Kravos thought his hitter was coming for him.”  
  
“I’m just a small-town cop,” Murphy’s tone was icy, “but I tend to think a man like Marcone will always be too busy to send somebody like this coat guy after a nobody like Kravos.”  
  
“Either way.” Tilly gave Roberts a look then turned back to Murphy. “So how did you find him?”  
  
“ThreeEye was a weird drug, when we got the crime lab looking at it they were saying it was almost a nootropic, a drug that makes you think better.”  
  
“If you can get past thinking there’s fairies in the air and bugs beneath your skin you know.”  
  
“Either way, some junkies rave when they’re on it, saying things you can’t see how they’d know-“  
  
“Like Sherlock Holmes. It was nuts.”  
  
“So we got one of the half lucid ones, pointed him at a map and when he stopped screaming he pointed us right at that warehouse.”  
  
“And like three other places.” Stallings sounded almost defensive. “We watched them all when we could, and eventually we spotted Kravos.”  
  
“That’s nuts.” Roberts spoke for all of them.  
  
“Maybe it was luck, maybe the junkie would have known sober, but either way it worked.” That sounded like the type of thing Tilly would omit from his report, and he suspected Murphy would do the same. “We’d been hearing about Kravos for a while, inspiring his acolytes to do some breaking and entering, it was convenient that he had them sign their work with a symbol. Once we got a shot we went in, and well, here we are.”  
  
“Homan Square. Pretty hospitable.” Tilly gave the break room another judging stare before looking to his watch. The display was dim to the point of illegibility, especially irritating since he’d just changed the batteries. “How long has it been?”  
  
Murphy checked hers, a classic mechanical one, before answering. “Maybe half an hour, should be any minute now. They’re oddly attached to procedures, way more than I’d heard they’d be.”  
  
Just then the door opened and Nowak stepped through. He quickly glanced around the room, but his eyes almost seemed vacant. Probably too many hits to the head in his boxing days.  
  
“He’s ready to see you now, if you want to come with me.” All of them stood, but he shook his head. “It’s a small room, there’s enough space for two, but it’s all recorded.” Murphy met Tilly’s eyes and he nodded.  
  
“We’ll go. Enjoy the coffee boys.”  
  
The corridors were narrow and almost empty as they moved through the precinct, and even more when they got to the holding cells. He could see the signs that they’d been retrofitted in, walls strengthened and doors reinforced after the fact. The cells were dark as they passed, small windows peering into small rooms. Some of the inmates stared at them as they passed, their distorted faces pressed against the glass. The individual blocks were separated by more of the heavy doors controlled by magnetic locks. The loud clicks were startling each and every time.  
  
“Why are the interrogation rooms so far into the cells?” Murphy asked the question he was thinking.  
  
“When prisoners are out of the cells they’ve got their best chance to escape, this way they’ve got to go further.” Nowak was clearly bored of them.  
  
At last they reached a short hallway, lined with what Tilly recognized as two way mirrors looking into small rooms. It was just another sign that Homan Square hadn’t been built for the purpose.  
  
Kravos was in a dark room, from just outside all he could see in the gloom was his form seated and slumped at the table, his hands cuffed to the table-top. Nowak walked to the door and punched a code in, waited a moment and tried again. The third try worked, and he stepped in, Tilly and Murphy walked past him into the dark room. Tilly waited for his eyes to adjust as Nowak fumbled for the light switch behind them.  
  
The door closed before the lights came on, shutting with what felt like finality. Nowak finally found the light switch, and when he turned it on Murphy wasn’t the only one who gasped.  
  
Denier was the one handcuffed to the table, more than that his wrists were bleeding freely from where the cuffs were biting through his skin.  
  
“I told you he was ready to see you.” Nowak’s voice was still emotionless.  
  
“What is this?” Murphy’s pistol was in her hand, and it wasn’t as dangerous as her voice.  
  
“Kravos. He’s ready to see you now.” Nowak looked to the camera in the corner of the room. “He sees all.”  
  
“Halloween was two weeks ago Nowak.” Tilly hadn’t drawn his pistol yet, but he was considering it.  
  
“You don’t understand Agent Tilly.” For the first time some emotion found its way to Nowak’s voice. “Here he sees all, he knows all. I don’t have a choice.”  
  
“Whatever he’s got on you isn’t worth dying for Nowak.” Tilly kept his voice calm as his heart pounded. “Now if you want to get out of this without anything else going wrong, I’m going to need two things, your gun, and the keys to those handcuffs.”  
  
Murphy didn’t say anything from his side, but he could see her gun stay rock steady as Nowak slowly reached for his pistol. He pulled it free with just two fingers, and held it out, gripping it with his thumb and pointer. Tilly moved to grab it, and took a step back as soon as he had it in case Nowak had second thoughts. He safed it, and stuffed it in a jacket pocket.  
  
“Now the keys.” Nowak put his hand to the ring at his waist before pausing.  
  
“You’re going to let him free?”  
  
“Yes.” Tilly kept his eyes focused on the cop’s upper body, alert for any motion that could signal a violent end to this madness.  
  
“Of your own free mortal will?”  
  
“Yes. Now give me the keys.”  
  
Nowak’s head turned to stare at Murphy in a unsettlingly smooth motion. “I want Lieutenant Murphy of the Chicago Police to swear to release him too.”  
  
“I swear.” She gestured with her gun. “The keys Nowak.”  
  
He broke the ring from his belt with a snap before tossing the ring at Tilly. He caught them, keeping his eyes on Nowak before looking at the keys. There was only one that was for handcuffs which was at least a small mercy. “Watch him Murphy.”  
  
She nodded and he stepped towards Denier. The man hadn’t moved since they’d come in, still hunched over his bloody hands. Tilly reached in, and then looked back at Nowak who was staring with what almost looked like anticipation. He unlocked one cuff, and it opened with a gush of blood and a wet squelch. Denier still didn’t move. “He’s going to need a hospital I think,” the second cuff was in an awkward spot and Tilly had to suppress guilt as he further cut the man trying to get to the lock. He got the key in, or thought he did, it was sticky with blood, and then it finally twisted open. “Denier?”  
  
“Nowak, stop!” Tilly jerked his head back. The cop had a knife in his hands and Murphy had her gun pointed at his forehead.  
  
“You see me Kravos!” He was staring at the camera, eyes wide. “Now wake me up!” He reversed his grip, and stabbed himself in the stomach, jerking up through his abdomen. The pain seemed to get through his mania as he fell to his knees, looking at his bloody hands. He held them up as if to show them. “He told me it was just a dream.”   
  
“What the shit.” Tilly stared at the corpse, before forcing himself to turn back to Denier. He reached to shake the man, he wasn’t looking forward to carrying him, and the jostling made his second cuff fall free.  
  
Denier burst from the chair at the same moment the lights in the interrogation room flicked off, his meaty paws swinging for Tilly.  
  
He dodged most of it, he could barely see in the red illumination of the emergency lights, the punch that should have taken his head off only catching him in the shoulder.  
  
“Denier! Stop it’s us!” He only roared in response to Murphy’s shouts, charging towards Tilly. Tilly had fought bigger, but he didn’t want to injure the cop. He kept his hands up, ready to box, but Denier just wrapped him up and slammed him into a wall. The sheetrock crumbled around him, and in the frozen moment Tilly was glad the interrogation room didn’t have concrete walls like normal.  
  
Then he was back in the fight, in a practiced movement he broke free, stomping the bigger man’s instep before shoving him back, or trying to, Denier didn’t seem to feel the pain and stayed close.  
  
“He’s doped on something!” Murphy didn’t hesitate after his shout darting in and delivering a brutal kick to the man’s knee. He could fight pain, but he couldn’t fight physics, Denier dropped as his knee stopped supporting him and Tilly took a long step back.  
  
“Denier, you need to calm down.” The man was scuttling on the ground, trying to get up, but with his knee shot he couldn’t. He seemed to be slowing, and neither Tilly nor Murphy wanted to get close. He splattered into Nowak’s pool of blood and stopped for a moment before bending his head down.  
  
“Is he licking that?” Murphy didn’t try not to sound disturbed.  
  
Denier turned at her words, looking up at them, his face a mess of blood, and grinned. He was back on his feet in an instant, but he didn’t charge. Instead he smashed the door open, grabbed Nowak’s body by the hair and sprinted into the darkness of the jail.  
  
“That door should have been locked.” It took Tilly a second to hear what Murphy had said.  
  
“What?”  
  
“That door, it should have been locked.” Murphy said it again more slowly.  
  
“The locks are all magnetic, and in case of a fire when they lose power they unlock.” Tilly knew he was missing something; he was still on edge from the adrenaline.  
  
The realization of what she was driving for drained all of the energy from his system. “This building, it’s not a proper prison. All the doors unlocked.”


	3. Chapter Three

Tilly locked eyes with Murphy, he knew his were as wide as hers. It wasn’t terror, which he was certainly feeling, but the sudden deep knowledge that there were barbarians at the gates. The normal rules of civilization, the ones they were both sworn to enforce, were gone.  
  
“They’re going to establish a perimeter first, and then push in.” He’d studied prison riots at Quantico. “Most of the prisoners will go back in their cells after a bit of mayhem, but some are going to retreat.”  
  
“And here we are right in the center of them.” Murphy had her gun in her hand, but her grip was still textbook. “Stallings and your guys know we’re here.”  
  
Tilly shook his head. “We can’t count on that knowledge getting passed to anyone in time.”  
  
“So then what?” She glanced towards the door, still open with the trail of blood leading out. “You want to make a break for it?”  
  
“Tactical withdrawal is going to look better in our reports.” He pulled his flashlight from his belt, the bright light was comforting before he switched it back off. “But, yes. Let’s get out of here.”  
  
Murphy pulled the door open and peered out. The red emergency lights turned her blonde hair bloody. “Which way? Denier ran the way we came in.”  
  
“He’s just one man on drugs. Worst case, we’ve got guns.”  
  
“Bullets really.” She stepped out into the darkness, and Tilly followed.  
  
Nowak’s blood led the way, and his legs had smeared it when Denier dragged him. They both tried to pick their way through it, but Tilly knew he was leaving footprints.  
  
The door from the interrogation corridor into the main set of cells loomed out of the shadows. It was shut but there was a single handprint on the push bar, and the blood still painted their way forward.  
  
Despite what Murphy had said his gun was a comforting weight in his hands. Nearly two pounds of metal and polymer, at times it was almost a talisman. Walking into an office it would draw attention, it was the promise of violence and force and at a deep level unsettling to most.  
  
“You ever shot anyone Tilly?” Murphy was standing ready at the door, he must have slowed.  
  
“Haven’t needed to.”  
  
“Being ready to shoot is the best way to keep that going, but don’t worry too much about keeping your record.” She put her hand on the door, avoiding the blood. “All set?” He nodded sharply. “Let’s go then.”  
  
She shoved the door open and stepped through without hesitating. Tilly followed, staying at her shoulder. The cell doors were open, but the cells were full of impenetrable shadows. Neither spoke but they sped up, the silence was unnerving. The prisoners were free, they should be shouting, excited. Instead there was nothing but blood and darkness, and even less blood now. Nowak must have been running out.  
  
“There’s no footsteps in the blood.”  
  
“Denier had to run out, and he was dragging a body. He must have beat them.” As he whispered he knew he was wrong. Even in the slow time of combat the scuffle with Denier had been quick, and the prisoners wouldn’t have reacted immediately.  
  
“They had to have been ready.”  
  
“A prison break?” Tilly turned the idea around in his mind.  
  
“If this was planned it explains how Kravos got out so fast.”  
  
“He was a third tier dealer with delusions of grandeur.”  
  
“This is pretty grand right here.”  
  
“This could be one addicted lineman with some bolt cutters. A real prison-“  
  
They both heard the noise and their argument stopped. It was a wet slop, and when Tilly heard it the second time he could tell where it was coming from. Tilly pointed to one of the cells, and took out his flashlight, holding it under his gun.  
  
Murphy held up her hand, motioning for him to wait as she stalked closer. He kept his eyes on the hallway as she investigated, just because it had been eerily deserted didn’t mean it would stay that way.  
  
“It’s Nowak, and you need to see this.”  
  
Tilly took her spot as she watched the corridor, and looked up at the corpse of Nowak. He was almost crucified, his wrists were smashed through the sheetrock, leaving his body hanging near the ceiling of the cell. There was more to it, and as he turned on his light he knew the image would be burned into his mind forever.  
  
Horns were drawn in blood against the wall, emerging from Nowak’s slumped head. Wings were sketched in long arcs stretching across the ceiling, and Nowak’s stomach was a pit where Denier had searched for more ink for his canvas. Tilly watched with numb dread as another loop of viscera fell free to join the pile on the floor.  
  
“Tilly, come on.” Murphy wasn’t whispering. That probably meant he’d missed her the first time. “We need to get out of here.”  
  
“Why do this?” He knew she didn’t have an answer, but he needed to ask the question.  
  
“Psychotics don’t need reasons.” Murphy didn’t believe her own answer.  
  
“I was going to try to keep Denier alive if he attacked again.”  
  
“That can’t be our priority.” Murphy’s voice was hard. “Now enough wasting time, let’s go.” She turned, and once again Tilly followed.  
  
The next door didn’t have blood on it, which wasn’t comforting. The trail had provided some confidence that Denier was still ahead of them, still running. Now he could be anywhere, waiting to make another image.  
  
“Stay sharp.” He nodded, and then pushed the door open. The next corridor was entirely black, the emergency lights either inoperative or knocked out. He had a light though, and next to him so did Murphy. They walked slowly, the circles of their flashlights darting along the walls and open doors of the cells. Their breaths and footsteps seemed to fill the darkness, the silence magnifying any noise.  
  
They both swung around as the door behind them banged open and then slammed shut.  
  
“Did you see anything?” Murphy spoke clearly and loudly. They were brightly lit with their flash lights, stealth wasn’t an option.  
  
“No, but those cells are right there. If he was quick enough-“  
  
“We’ve got to check it, we can’t leave someone behind us in the dark.” Murphy didn’t like the idea, but Tilly saw logic in her words.  
  
“Fast then.” He advanced keeping his light on the door and one side of the hall, Murphy took the other. If some prisoner had stayed behind them and was following they wouldn’t give him any more chances to be clever. They checked each cell as they passed, until finally they only each had the last one before the door.  
  
“On three?” Tilly held up two fingers where Murphy could see them. “One, Two!” He lunged forward, sweeping his flashlight and gun across the entire cell. “Clear!” His shout mingled with Murphy’s.  
  
Without speaking they both turned to face the steel door, whoever opened it was on the other side.  
  
“Should we just leave him?” Murphy sounded like she wanted the answer to be yes.  
  
“Let’s just open it. If we don’t see him we keep going.”  
  
“Alright.” She moved to the right, standing where she’d have a clear shot as soon as the door opened. “Go for it.”  
  
He had to shuffle his light to get enough fingers free to open the door, and the sudden reduction of illumination shook him more than it should. He got a good grip, looked to Murphy, and then pulled the door open in a sudden jerk. Murphy’s light swept the hallway methodically, nothing.  
  
“Do you want to check on Nowak?”  
  
“Fuck no.” Tilly let the door go, before Murphy grabbed it by the edge.  
  
“Handprints.” More blood, black in the red light.  
  
“Denier’s?” Tilly gave the marks a quick look before pushing the door shut.  
  
“Who else could it be?” Murphy took several steps back from the door, keeping her light on it before she turned half away.  
  
“You think he doubled back?”  
  
“Or someone else was still in their cell.” They hadn’t checked the cells thoroughly, only Nowak’s.  
  
“We need to look in them all now.”  
  
“That’ll slow us down.”  
  
“Better to be slow than dead.” The image of Nowak stuck to the wall came to his mind. “I don’t feel like being wall art.” Murphy didn’t argue.  
  
They were halfway down the hall, the tension rising with each black shadowed door, when they heard another door ahead of them close softly. They both turned their lights along the corridor, the only door that was closed was the one to the next hallway.  
  
“Must be a prisoner ahead of us.” Tilly kept his light firmly on the center of the door. “Saw the lights and the guns, and decided he’d rather not come back.”  
  
“You don’t think it was Denier?”  
  
“I can’t see him being stealthy.” Prisoners were a threat, but he couldn’t help but feel relieved at the thought of them. Prisoners were normal.  
  
“Point.” They continued methodically, but now that he was sure there was someone in front of them he almost calmed. He’d had enough waiting. At last after what felt like hours- his watch was entirely dead now- they reached the door.  
  
“More blood on the handle.” Murphy said it dispassionately, just reporting the weather.  
  
“Could he have doubled back?”  
  
“There wasn’t any blood on this side of the door behind us.”  
  
“Somebody else with bloody hands then.”  
  
“Think that’s common?”  
  
“In Chicago? Tonight? Yes.” Once again he shuffled his light to get the door open, having a harder time while avoiding the dripping blood. Murphy stood ready as he pulled the door, and the dim glow of the emergency lights was welcome. They advanced, but Murphy stopped him after a few steps and pointed. A cell door was shut.  
  
Their progress had never felt so slow, checking each cell was more necessary now that they knew they’d missed at least one prisoner in the darkness. At last they got to the door, Tilly peered through its small window to see a man in an orange jumpsuit that matched his hair on his knees apparently praying.  
  
“What’s in there?” He didn’t realize Murphy wasn’t tall enough to see the floor through the door.  
  
“A man, we’ve got to talk to him. See what he knows.”  
  
“Don’t get too close to him.” He raised an eyebrow at that.  
  
“Thanks for the tip.”  
  
The door opening got the man off his knees, but he leapt back into the corner of his cell.  
  
“I’m not coming with you!” His words ran over themselves. “I don’t care if this is a dream or a nightmare, I’m not leaving this cell!”  
  
“Good. That’ll look better when you’re sentenced I’m sure.” Tilly took his gun off the man, although it was only by a fraction of a degree. “What happened here? Who organized the breakout?”  
  
“You know him! You brought him here. He’s been whispering in the walls and dreams for days and now he finally speaks.”  
  
“Leonid Kravos did this?” Murphy didn’t react to the madness past what was strictly necessary. She was wasted on Special Investigations.  
  
“Don’t say his name!” The prisoner tried to shush her, before Tilly’s gun came back up and he covered his own mouth. “I should have listened to Father Forthill, he told me-“  
  
“This isn’t Harry Potter.” Tilly was out of patience. “Just tell us if it was Kravos or not.”  
  
“Stop saying his name!” The words were half strangled as he ground them out through his clasped hands. “He’ll hear it!”  
  
“What did Kravos do?” The emergency lights in the cell flickered out for a second and the prisoner went berserk, dropping back to his knees.  
  
“Don’t kill me! I’m sorry I talked, I’m sorry I didn’t join you. Please, please!”  
  
A door banged open, and Tilley didn’t wait for Murphy’s shout as he ran back into the hall. Denier stood in the center of the opening, framed by black from the corridor behind him, the one they were headed for. His hands still dripped blood, too fresh to be Nowak’s.  
  
“Get on your knees Denier and put your hands up.” Murphy’s voice was ice. “I’m not going to ask twice.”  
  
For a second Tilly thought he might do it, that whatever drugs were running through him would let rationality triumph, but he shouldn’t have hoped. With an inarticulate roar Denier sprinted at them, bloody spittle flying from his lips.  
  
They fired, and they hit. For a second Tilly was reminded of stories from training, of guys who just wouldn’t go down no matter how many bullets were in them, but Denier weaved, stumbled, and then dropped twenty feet short of them. He twitched on the ground, his body not knowing it was dead yet, but now the blood on him wasn’t his victims’.  
  
“Reloading.” Murphy started the process, ejecting her magazine, but she fumbled catching it, the length of metal clattered on the ground.  
  
The ginger prisoner chose that instant to attack.  
  
He burst from his cell. Even crouched and unready Murphy managed to mostly dodge his hit although she still fell. The prisoner dove for her gun, he couldn’t know it was unloaded, and Tilly didn’t hesitate, shooting twice before his own gun clicked empty.  
  
His baton was in his hand and snapped out in a second, but he didn’t need it. Both shots had hit, and the prisoner staggered backwards, each step more unsteady until he fell just short of Denier. He managed one last flop, and then stilled in the expanding pool of blood.  
  
“You alright Murphy?” He didn’t take his eyes off either of the bodies. He heard her get up, and finish reloading without the normal firm rack of the slide.  
  
“Yeah, thanks for keeping him off me.”  
  
“I’m a little annoyed to have broken my streak, but I guess it was worth it.” Reloading his own weapon made him feel a little better.  
  
“Think of all the drinks this will get you, that ought to help you.”  
  
“No one will believe there’s pretty blondes in the Chicago PD, the whole story is too implausible.”  
  
That got a snort. “Another night like this and maybe there won’t be.”  
  
“We’re almost out of the cells at least, and our psychotic is down.” He still kept his gun on the bodies, he was suddenly wary of tempting fate.  
  
“Let’s go then.”  
  
They skirted the edges of the hall as they passed the corpses, and pulled out their flashlights for the next dark corridor.  
  
“Ready?” Murphy didn’t get a chance to answer before all the lights went out and the building rumbled. “An earthquake? This story keeps getting worse.” He switched on his flashlight, then hit it when it only gave a dull glow. Murphy was staring at hers with barely concealed worry, it wasn’t working at all.  
  
“We’ll be quick.” Her nerves were back as he spoke, but he didn’t think he could take any credit.  
  
“We’d better be.” She opened the door this time, moving into the darkness that their weak light could only push back.  
  
They didn’t check the cells, not daring to take the time with their only flashlight almost dead and when the door was finally visible Tilly didn’t hesitate to let out a sigh of relief. There were bloodstains on the pushbar, but Denier was done. The relief lasted until Murphy tried to push the door open and nothing happened.  
  
“Is it locked?” He turned, looking back into the dark now that whatever was in it could be catching up.  
  
“Locked or maybe jammed. The earthquake could have shifted the frame.”  
  
“Want to give it a kick?” The dull thud sounded the failure of that plan. He gave it a try as well, he was a foot taller than her, but his efforts didn’t work either. It was louder though, and someone knocked back.  
  
“Who’s there?” Tilly felt vaguely foolish shouting it, he’d been told too many jokes as a kid.  
  
“Kravos, Kravos, Kravos!” The shout was almost exultant, and Tilly didn’t hesitate. He made it what felt like halfway down the hall with Murphy at his heels before his flashlight finally gave up. He stumbled to a stop, and Murphy ran into him, they both groped for each other’s hands before they started to creep slowly into the perfect blackness.  
  
“The interrogation rooms were in the middle of the cells Nowak said.” They were back to whispering.  
  
“Yeah and we know there’s at least one guy behind us.” Tilly could feel they were drifting in the dark from how their steps echoed off the wall. Thoughts that he was only hoping it was the wall were swiftly banished. “Plus everyone on the other side of the interrogation rooms.”  
  
“Yes, but that means there’s more exits.”  
  
“Ones that aren’t jammed.” They’d somehow gotten to the end and were both searching for the door handle with their pistols tracing the door. It took far longer than it should have before Murphy found it.  
  
“Hopefully.” The door swung open, and the light was almost blinding. It wasn’t enough to keep him from seeing what was there, and what wasn’t.  
  
A lawyer once told him never to ask questions he didn’t want to know the answers to, but he wasn’t a lawyer.  
  
“Where are the bodies?”  
  
The giant bloodstain remained, but footsteps led out of it, and drag marks that looked familiar. They led to a cell and Tilly was sure he knew what they were about to find.  
  
The prisoner was crucified, horns and wings painted in blood on the walls, but besides him was what Tilly really focused on.  
  
There was a crater in the wall, a black pit that the emergency lighting did nothing to. Its edges were bloody, and Denier’s footsteps led right into it.


	4. Chapter Four

“When they built this place they really didn’t do anything right.” He knew the symptoms of shock, and falling back onto normal routines when they were inappropriate fit. He’d always make fun of regular police officers.  
  
“Whispers in the walls.” Murphy's mouth was a tight line as she peered into the black void that the shattered back wall revealed. “He was being literal.”  
  
Tilly turned, unable to face the corpse or the hole. “How did Denier get up?” He had watched the man fall, their bullets ripping through his chest. “No matter what drugs he was on-“  
  
The clanging of a cell block door shut him up. The next sound was more disturbing, footsteps a lot of them and coming closer. He glanced down at his gun, the prisoners were already near and he’d seen how little a pistol could do already. He took aim at the hall anyway, waiting for the mad rush, when with a whine the emergency lights flickered out.  
  
He knew his flashlight was dead, and he didn’t want to join it. He tried to listen, to somehow track his enemies in the darkness, but he felt Murphy’s hand on his shoulder and let her pull him back against the wall.  
  
They crouched beneath the nameless prisoner’s body, under the painted wings, and the air stank of iron. He held his breath as best he could, to be quiet and to try to ignore where he was.  
  
“Kravos says they’re here, check every cell!” The prisoner’s voice was thin and reedy, but he didn’t need gravitas to be a threat.  
  
The sudden blackness didn’t stop the prisoners, their footsteps continued but they were different, as the men tested every placement of their feet. For the first time Tilly was grateful for the terrible electrical system in the prison, there was a chance they’d be missed in the darkness.  
  
The emergency lights chose that moment to turn back on.  
  
Murphy’s hand on his shoulder pulled him, and he turned to see her climbing into the hole. The prisoners were getting closer by the second, and swallowing every protest he wanted to make Tilly followed her.  
  
The interior of the walls wasn’t perfectly dark around the hole, and he could just barely see the studs holding the reinforced sheetrock of the cells. Murphy had stepped across the narrow gap, clinging to the opposite wall as he got a grip on his side. The dead prisoner’s wrists were smashed through just above his eye level and they were rimmed with light sneaking through the rough openings. There were other lights, further away and up above them. The hollow behind the walls stretched deep into the darkness, a void inside Homan Square.  
  
He tapped Murphy and pointed at one of the openings, up a floor and a few cell widths over. She nodded and started to chimney her way to the second floor. He wasn’t sure he could match that, but luckily he was tall enough to reach the next set of boards with a jump and could pull himself up. He resolutely didn’t think about the gap extending at least another floor beneath them as he leapt, and especially not about the dead man’s hands dragging past him as he ascended.  
  
Something in him, some relic of the monkey ages ago, felt better when he was above the prisoners searching for them. He was more than an animal though, and as they inched along towards the next hole his mind was racing. Denier had made that hole, that’s what he’d thought. It hadn’t made sense then, he’d watched him die, and it didn’t make sense now. Maybe a man on some exotic drug cocktail could get up again, stuff another man into a wall, and then madly smash themselves into it before falling and finally dying, but he couldn’t see him climbing back out again.  
  
Tilly knew he was in shape, but it hadn’t been easy to climb up, and for a man whose blood wasn’t even in his body it had to be impossible, especially in the darkness. Denier would have needed to climb and traverse through the walls, and then smash his way out again in near total darkness. There was a simpler answer.  
  
“Murphy.” His whisper seemed deafening. “There’s probably someone else in here with us.” He could only see the barest shape of her head in the gloom, but it was enough for her nod. She kept moving and after a second he followed, there was nothing else to do.  
  
Their shuffling steps echoed strangely in the confined area. Each motion dislodged dust from the baseboards, specks of dirt and rat shit that was audible as it fell for what seemed like forever. The noise made both of them slow as they approached their goal, neither wanted to give any warning to anyone back outside the walls.  
  
The rattle of dropping debris behind them made them forget caution. Murphy raced forward to the light, bounded the gap and dove back into the prison. Tilly couldn’t go as fast, their pursuer was catching up to him, but Murphy stepped back into the void. The dim light was blinding around her, her blonde hair a halo as she brought up her hands, her gun in one and a working flashlight in the other.  
  
“Against the wall!” He flattened himself against the sheetrock, his cheek pressed into the rough surface as he looked back at what Murphy could see. Who she could see- Denier.  
  
The man was a level down and snarling up at them with the crevasse behind him. The cop was covered in dust and blood, his teeth shining white.  
  
She fired, and the gunshots were deafening in the space between the walls. The sound was like a physical force, but she missed, she had to have missed, because Denier didn’t move except to crouch as if to spring.  
  
He didn’t get the chance.  
  
Something hit him, a car was Tilly’s first reaction as something smashed through the wall, hit Denier and flung him through the other wall. Dust filled the air, Murphy’s flashlight had gone dead, but there was a bar of light from the new holes, craters from the impact. A claymore, some plastic explosive, that’s what it must have been.  
  
Explanations vanished from his head as someone, a black shadow, leapt across the gap leaving the dust swirling in his wake. It was him.  
  
Tilly didn’t hesitate, dropping back to the first floor, somehow not falling as he slid down the studs.  
  
“Tilly! Stop!” He ignored Murphy’s shout as he plunged into the dust and back out into the cells.  
  
The man in the coat was there, standing tall and proud as he stared down at the ruins of Denier. The cop was twitching, and his entire ribcage was caved in with his legs bent strangely.  
  
“You can’t answer, but I know what you’re going through.” He crouched next to the man who was still straining to attack, his face contorted as he huffed out foamy blood. His voice was soft, not at all fitting for a hitman. “It’s not your fault, but I can’t cure you. No one can. I’m sorry.”  
  
He stood, and his coat draped around him, as if the man was hiding in it before he reached in it for something, and Tilly acted.  
  
“Freeze! Show me your hands!” His gun was up, pointed at the man’s head. Behind him Murphy came from the wall and stopped at the scene.  
  
The hitman raised his hands slowly, both were covered in jewelry. Mismatched rings decorated his fingers, and heavy silver bracelets hung from both arms.  
  
“Step away from the cop.”  
  
He took a single step, and it covered far more ground than it should. He really was towering.  
  
“Turn around and put your hands on the wall- Murphy cover me.” He didn’t take his eyes off the man, not daring to before he was frisked and in handcuffs.  
  
“No.” The hitman turned ninety degrees, and took another slow step back, getting his back to the cell wall and putting all the other inhabitants in front of him.  
  
“Turn around.” Tilly’s gun was rocksteady and aimed at the man’s left eye. His coat hung loosely, there wasn’t any evidence of the strike plates that had to be under it, but it didn’t matter for a head shot. “I won’t ask again.”  
  
“Won’t you?” His voice was still soft, utterly incongruous. For a long moment Tilly couldn’t think of what to do. He was too close to the suspect, twenty one feet had been the rule drilled in to him at Quantico, and past that he was in the middle of a prison break. He had the baton at his waist, but the hitman had a foot and who knew how many pounds on him. In a fistfight-  
  
Denier roared, his lungs somehow still working as he stood on broken legs. Tilly’s eyes moved off the man in the coat for a split second, and things stopped making sense.  
  
The hitman flung a long arm out, rings sparkling in the dim light. The dust in the air rippled as something tore through it, and then Denier was blasted through another wall. The man didn’t hesitate, striding forward with one arm raised, his bracelets shining blue as the hole in the wall shattered around him, bits of falling drywall tracing a sphere around him.  
  
Tilly fired as the man drew a pistol and his shots ricocheted off thin air before the man fired his own gun. He raced into the next cell, Denier’s head was a pulped mess, and above him the man in the coat had blown a hole in the ceiling. He shouted something as he jumped, wind slammed into him and the man pulled himself easily to the next level before he turned and looked down at the two of them.  
  
“This isn’t your fight detectives.” The sphere still surrounded him, dust clinging to it, and Tilly didn’t want to think about trying to shoot it again. “Get out of here, Kravos can do the same thing to you he did to Denier.”  
  
“What do you care?” Murphy was next to him, her gun not quite pointed at the hitman.  
  
“Lieutenant Murphy, you’ve seen my work.” The hitman tried to smile, but his angular face made it a condescending smirk. “I think you know that I keep the people who aren’t relevant out of trouble.”  
  
“Is that how Marcone sees it?” If the man wanted to talk he’d encourage it. He’d ask Murphy what he meant later.  
  
“He made the choice to be relevant.” Something on the next level caught the hitman’s attention, his mouth twisted and he turned before shouting down at them. “The way out should be clear, Kravos wanted me.” He strode off as his coat swirled behind him.  
  
Tilly had to turn to see Murphy, to see something resembling normality.  
  
“What the fuck was that?” She only shook her head. “We’ve got to get up after him!”  
  
“Are you joking?” She grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. “Did you just see that? He blew up that wall with his brain!”  
  
He batted her hand off him and straightened. “I don’t know what I saw, but I know what I signed up for.”  
  
“What are you going to do, speak sharply to him? He just ate six bullets!” Murphy was shouting by the end. “He took out Denier, and-“ The lights shut off again and Murphy went silent.  
  
Tilly tried to hear past the ringing in his ears, there’d been far too many gunshots for a small area. The prisoners had been searching for them, they couldn’t have missed the commotion. He listened for the sounds of men stepping through the darkness, but nothing. He didn’t know how long they waited before the stillness got to him.  
  
“Murphy?” She didn’t answer, and when the lights came back on she wasn’t there.


	5. Chapter Five

“Murphy!” Shouting was purely reflexive. Tilly burst into the hall of the cell block, his gun sweeping across the doors and walls. It was empty, and beneath the adrenaline he could feel fear coiling.  
  
He spun at the mere suggestion of a noise, his ears still ringing from the gunfire. Nothing was behind him, but he pressed his back to the wall as he searched the corridor.  
  
She’d been right there, not a yard from him, and now she was gone. He didn’t know how long it had been in the dark, adrenaline made time stretch and warp, but she would have struggled, she should have still been in the hall unless-  
  
The man in the coat had shattered a new hole through the walls, opening up the next cell block. He’d done impossible things, he could have pulled Murphy away in the blackness. He heard a noise, a rattle in the walls, and ice filled his spine.  
  
Tilly didn’t want to go back into the abyss, but he wasn’t leaving without Murphy. He gritted his teeth, gathering his courage before jumping across the gap.  
  
The other cell block’s lights were out, but it was lit with a flickering orange. Tilly followed his gun as he swept the hall, a warzone. There were craters in the walls, and a sickening smell of burnt hair and pork. There was a body and Tilly froze before slowly approaching it. He’d seen too many corpses stand up tonight already.  
  
His perspective warped as he approached, the proportions of the burnt victim didn’t seem right. His arms were too long, and his skin was grey, even where it had been burnt. Tilly stared at it, and like a magic trick the body snapped into focus. It wasn’t a man.  
  
His gun was pointed at its scorched head, at the fangs in its dead mouth, and a new sensation filled him. Xenophobia, it was a word that had kept coming up in FBI training, but at least foreigners were human. This was something else, and in the firelight he felt a dread that went back to the Neanderthals. There were monsters in the dark.  
  
The thing seemed to fill his entire vision, the claws and fangs growing as he tried to make sense of it. His breaths were short and his heart pounded, all the shadows swelled. The one thought that broke him free was that there might be more of them. Beneath the terror his training remained. He’d been taught how to deal with animals, and with criminals. Whatever this was could be killed. The thought might have been vainglorious, but the courage from it pushed back the fear that had been suffocating his mind.  
  
Murphy had to remain his priority. They’d entered together and they’d leave together. Kravos and the man in the coat were secondary, whatever madness they were engaged in could wait for daylight and reinforcements.  
  
The firelight behind him was guttering out, it looked like the paint had been flammable and now the hard wood of the shattered doors was only singed and smoldering. If he stayed where he was he’d be back in the dark with a hopefully dead creature. He needed light to find Murphy, making a torch briefly crossed his mind, but the fire wouldn’t last.  
  
Tilly made his way back towards the hole in the wall, trying to plan his next move. Whatever had taken Murphy had had her for too long for him to follow. He wasn’t in some forest where he could look for tracks, unless they were helpfully outlined in blood like Denier’s. Even if he was in a forest he couldn’t look for tracks, he wasn’t some sort of hunter.  
  
If he wanted to find Murphy he’d need access to the surveillance network of the prison. Kravos was still using it, so it must be operational despite the power outage. Homan Square being a retrofit might work in his favor for once, the cameras would have been added fairly recently. In buildings of a certain age the cameras were hardwired to a single room, here they could probably be accessed from any guard desk. He knew where one was, but the ground floor of the prison was a no go area. There’d be one on the second level, and if the man in the coat had shown anything it was an impressive capacity for violence. Tilly was willing to bet he’d cleared the floor.  
  
It took a moment for him to holster his gun as he looked into the gap between walls. He needed both his hands to climb, but the weight of his gun had been comforting. The sheetrock dust was gritty beneath his fingers as he clambered up to the next level, his fading adrenaline giving him just enough of a push to lift his increasingly heavy gear.  
  
The hole that he and Murphy had originally planned to go through was close, and this time he was uninterrupted. The cell door was open, and as he expected the hallway was empty. The lights were on, the real lights, and having his full vision back was an incredible relief.  
  
He turned left as he exited the cell, towards the main area of the precinct. His gun was back in his hands, the isosceles stance feeling foreign. He was in a prison with monsters and it was nothing he’d ever trained for. The baton at his hip was inviting, a club, a simpler weapon for a simple struggle.  
  
The door to the next cell block swung open easily and Tilly swept it as he strode through. He froze, his gun pointed at the man in the coat who looked just as surprised to see him. The hitman had a necklace hanging from his gloved fist, one that was resolutely failing to obey the law of gravity as it pointed towards the ceiling.  
  
“Detective.” His voice was still quiet. “You didn’t leave with your partner?”  
  
“We’ve got duties.” Tilly’s gun was fixed on him. “We don’t run from criminals.”  
  
“Detective…” The man paused for a second and Tilly realized he was looking for a name.  
  
“Special Agent Tilly, and just a reminder you’re under arrest.” That drew a smirk, one that Tilly was powerless to remove.  
  
“Right. Agent Tilly you should go get Lieutenant Murphy and run.” He looked back down to the floating necklace and then up to where it was aimed.  
  
“As soon as you give her back we might.” He’d hoped to make the hitman worry about Murphy appearing behind him, but his complete disregard for the guns made that impossible.  
  
“She’s pretty small and my coat is pretty baggy, but I promise I’m not hiding her.” He was apparently finished with the necklace as he put it back on. “You lost her?”  
  
“She vanished in the darkness, down below.” That grabbed his attention.  
  
“Something took her into the walls?”  
  
“What’s it to you?”  
  
“Indirectly you’re both here because of me, and I try to be very careful not to have any obligations.”  
  
Kravos’s words came back to him. “Kravos thought we could stop you from killing him.”  
  
“I’m sure he did. He has just enough power to be dangerous, and too little restraint to ensure it. If he’d had any sense he’d have stayed away from three eye, and more importantly away from Homan Square.” The hitman took a step towards him, and Tilly’s grip on his gun tightened. “Seriously? We’re about to go rescue your partner and you’re keeping a gun on me?”  
  
“I think a little caution is warranted for a killer of your stature.”  
  
“I’m not that tall.”  
  
“You don’t deny being a killer though.”  
  
“I’ve killed things you can’t even imagine Agent Tilly, and if we’re very lucky we’ll get Lieutenant Murphy back with you still being unable to imagine them.”  
  
“I saw that thing downstairs.” Tilly kept his voice level.  
  
“The ghoul? If that’s all we see I’ll call it a win.”  
  
“Why was it here?”  
  
“Let’s walk and talk.” The hitman pushed past him, deliberately arrogant. “And it’s here because of a long tradition in the Chicago PD.”  
  
Possibilities spun through Tilly’s mind. “They’re Satanists?” That got a laugh.  
  
“Only the parking enforcers.” He opened the door and walked through, his coat swirling behind him.  
  
“What do you mean then?”  
  
“Places of fear and misery attract some creatures, pain and blood brings more.” The man’s profile was sharp against the shadow of the hole in the wall. “I’m surprised they were willing to let a Fed in here, there’s a lot the cops would prefer to be kept hidden.”  
  
Corruption then, abuse of prisoners. It was regrettably normal.  
  
“That can’t be all, or there’d be monsters in every prison in America.”  
  
“Who says there’s not?” The hitman’s necklace ignited, casting a sharp blue light into the darkness. He stepped fearlessly into the abyss, and Tilly followed.  
  
The man made no effort to be quiet, dropping down and scattering dust and debris, supremely confident. Tilly was more cautious, the illumination had revealed that the gap between walls went far deeper than he’d imagined.  
  
“Chicago is an old town.” The hitman was a chatty sort. “All sorts of things are buried, the refuse of floods and the fire.” He slid down another level. “And as people moved out things moved in.”  
  
Tilly didn’t think there’d been that much subsiding in Chicago, but at this point his brain was unable to present counterarguments to the madness.  
  
“Whatever took the Lieutenant probably came in this way.” They were at the level of what Tilly would have called a sub basement, and the darkness still extended beneath them. “Which probably means they’re either back here or coming here.”  
  
“And you want to fight something that could take Murphy silently in total darkness?”  
  
“They definitely don’t want to fight me.”  
  
The ground was at last visible beneath them, the blue light casting strange shadows. The hitman sped up with reckless abandon, before landing in a crouch and straightening. His coat pooled around him like something from comic book, and the strangeness of the situation almost made Tilly laugh.  
  
“Be careful Agent.” There was a tunnel that the hitman was looking at speculatively, and the dirt floor was well trodden. “There are old and foul things this far down.”  
  
Tilly assumed that meant he should draw his gun.  
  
“What made this tunnel?”  
  
“There’s a lot that could. Homan Square is a feast for the right things.” The hitman was taking slow and deliberate steps peering at every bend in the tunnel. “The interference with the construction of the cells speaks to planning and political influence, which gets us into a whole different set of monsters.” The tunnel suddenly widened, and the dirt was replaced by blue bricks. No, that was a trick of the light, they were white. “And if I were to guess based on this, it was vampires.”  
  
The tension that had flooded him suddenly had an outlet and he bent over laughing. At last he managed to pull himself together to see an affronted hitman. “You’re kidding.” The man raised an eyebrow. “You’re not kidding?”  
  
“Regrettably not.” He nodded to a wall, that Tilly hadn’t really looked at. Manacles, covered in either rust or blood were firmly mounted on the brick. “Some of them feed on fear. Homan Square would have been a buffet, and if they got particularly hungry…”  
  
“A prisoner who wasn’t on a list would end up down here.”  
  
“Probably.”  
  
This was another revelation Tilly wasn’t going to confront. “But where’s Murphy?”  
  
“The blood on the manacles is dry, so she probably hasn’t been brought down here. I’ll collapse the tunnel, and then we’ll find the vampire somewhere above us.” Tilly looked down at the door on the far side of the torture chamber and the hitman followed his gaze. “If she’s been taken that far we won’t find her, but old vampires are creatures of habit. If he had her, she’d be here.”  
  
“That’s not a lot to go on.”  
  
“It’s all we’ve got.” The hitman had started up the tunnel towards Homan Square before looking back. “Well that and firepower.” A sun burst into existence over his gloved hand, and the light showed the hitman’s sharp grin. “Come on agent, we’ve got a vampire to burn.”


End file.
